Six Plates Wine Bar

This evening, my friend AE and I went to Six Plates Wine Bar. I've been wanting to try it for quite some time, ever since I read Joe's review. When I asked about shorter tables, since bar tables aren't exactly wheelchair friendly, we were reminded by the friendly co-owner, Matthew Beason, that it isn't a restaurant, it's a wine bar, so there aren't any normal dining tables. Fortunately, there are lots of comfortable looking chairs and the accompanying coffee tables ended up being more than adequate.

Just because it isn't a restaurant doesn't meant that you can't find a fantastic meal there. Just because it's a wine bar doesn't mean that you can't get non-alcoholic beverages there. They have several sodas, including root beer, from the Sprecher brewery, in Wisconsin. I tend to like spicier root beers, but it was good. They also have bottled water, non-alcoholic beer and orange juice. I understand that they also serve precious Durham tap water, upon request.

They offer six plates of food and each plate is optionally paired with a glass of wine. Beason explained that he plans to keep gradually changing the menu. It may change slightly every day, particularly the wines, but two plates will change every week, such that the menu will change completely in the course of a month.


We started out with the cheese plate. The plate (or slate, in this case) came with slices of a Rue Cler baguette, which was incredibly good. Each cheese was also paired with an additional flavor. The fourme d'ambert, which was my favorite, was served with dried-moist cranberries, the sottocenere was with whole hazelnuts and the manchego was with honeycomb. All were great combinations and the remaining honey, from Busy Bee Apiaries, in Chapel Hill, was very good by itself, once all the cheese was gone. No, I did not lick the slate, but I came close.

We also had the seafood ravioli. It was lightly fried ravioli containing primarily shrimp, some crab, sage and garlic. It was quite wonderful.

For dessert, AE ordered the chocolate mousse. Each large spoon contained mousse and candied orange peel, cinnamon whipped cream and raspberry coulis, respectively. I got to taste each one and the mousse was heavenly by itself, but each addition complimented it in different ways. It was a very nice dessert, but as rich as it was, three regular sized spoonfuls were plenty for me.

It's definitely an unusual, eccentric and elegant place. I hope all of you will check it out. It's very dark inside and they actually provide a flashlight to look at the menu when you first come in. Eventually, your eyes adjust and it's comfortable. They seem to play a nice selection of music and it's loud enough such that you can't ignore it, but not such that it makes talking difficult.

I am definitely looking forward to going back soon.